AMD: Intel Would Like Us Dead, Intel Denies.

The quarrel between Advanced Micro Devices and Intel Corp. over potential breach of the cross-licensing agreement between the two companies is heating up. In a recent exchange of opinions AMD said that Intel would love to see AMD going out of business, whereas Intel said that it only wants to ensure that its intellectual property is not shared with third parties.

“I don’t agree with the premise that they have to have us and they think they have to have us. I think they would absolutely like us dead. […] In their perfect world, we wouldn’t exist. If they had to deal with the government every now and then, that’s fine, and they’re still extracting monopoly profits from the industry,” said AMD general counsel Harry Wolin in an interview with Cnet News.com web-site.

It is widely believed that Intel needs existence of its much smaller rival AMD in order to convince the market and anti-trust authorities that it has rivals to avoid prosecution since nowadays only Intel, AMD and Via Technologies sell x86 microprocessors, which power the vast majority of desktops, laptops and servers. Via Technologies’ market share is so negligible that it cannot be seriously considered as a competitor for Intel. AMD claims that Intel does not need such a rival, but Intel denies its intentions to destroy AMD.

“It’s nice of them to try to speak for us. AMD has been a competitor for almost 40 years in one form or another. This is not about AMD going away. This is about our rights and AMD's rights under the patent cross-license agreement,” said Chuck Mulloy, a spokesperson for Intel.

Earlier this months AMD and its partner Advanced Technology Investment Company established GlobalFoundries, the joint venture that will produce microprocessors for AMD and different chip for others using equipment and technologies inherited from the world’s second biggest supplier of x86 chips. Intel believes that by letting GlobalFoundries to produce [x86] chips AMD breaches cross-licensing agreement with the chip giant (this may also mean that GlobalFoundries infringes Intel’s patents and also claims that by creating the manufacturing company AMD also disclosed terms of confidential cross-license agreement with Intel.